August 16, 2024
Larger tends to deal with size, both quantitatively and in physical dimensions. So you might refer to a larger man if you're talking about a guy who's six feet tall and 250 pounds, but you may also refer to a larger quantity of people at one public gathering over another.
Bigger is mostly synonymous with larger, but many consider larger the more formal word. Also, bigger can refer to someone or something that's more popular and/or has more power or strength. The formal aspect may be why you're more likely to hear the term "greater quantity" but not "bigger quantity." However, it's not unusual to hear about a bigger man in the same respect as referenced above.
One peculiar function of bigger is that popularity thing. Theoretically, a smaller person could be a bigger person in a room full of people, because that physically smaller person has a bigger personality than the rest. So you could refer to that physically smaller person as a bigger person and it would make sense, but it would not make sense to try to say the physically smaller person was a larger person (even though some people are "larger than life").
Greater, on the other hand, is most commonly used in reference to numbers or enhanced skills. Someone may be a greater athlete than their peers. And that same athlete may have a greater number of awards than anyone else to prove it. That said, greater is not commonly used to refer to the superior size of a person. So if you referred to our large man from earlier, you would not refer to him as the greater man (unless it's somehow tied to his personality or superior skills).
Higher may be used to refer to a person's increased height, but it would be limited to that solely. It could also be used to refer to a more advanced number or degree of something. In other words, a person could have a higher number of awards or their test scores are higher the second time they take a test.
Comments